This is a contribution to the synchroblog series on Syria at the MennoNerds network, of which this blog is a member.

A couple of days ago the leader of the main racist party here in Sweden was holding a very weird speech. Besides stating that you cannot separate what’s Christian and what’s Swedish, and demanding that Swedish churches must be built with Swedish material, he used the horrible sarin gas attack in Syria as an argument for not receiving refugees from there. Yeah, you heard me. He said that since the crisis in Syria is so severe, it is horrible for the Swedish government to waste money on asylum immigration instead of supporting the refugees in their local areas, i.e. refugee camps.

Perhaps he missed the news about Syrians wanting to return to the conflict because the circumstances in their Jordanian refugee camps are killing them.

I mean, God bless the UNHCR, we should really give as much as we can to them right now, but they can never ever offer the same security, welfare and peace that a Western country can. It’s ridiculously stupid to say that it’s cheaper to help refugees in their local areas than welcoming them to the West, because the results are extremely cheap as well. And no, the refugees that manage to get to a Western country don’t want to be deported to a refugee camp. If we really care about Syrian lives, we must welcome them to our countries.

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